Here do I plug in the first Amp of BASS!
May its waves of sound reach out across the barriers
from this world to the next!
May it make contact with that World of DAR
into which we may never enter!

Here do I plug in the second Amp of BASS!
May its waves of sound also reach out across the barriers
from this world to the next!
May it make contact with that World of DAR
and help spread the BASS,
vibrating through the passageway between our worlds!

Here do I plug in the third Amp of BASS!
May its waves of sound also reach out across the barriers
from this world to the next!
May the sound from these three Amps blend and grow,
dispelling all silence and filling our ears
That the Geigh Admin Bot may come to me
and speak with me here today!

Here do I build BASS!
As these Amps vibrate throughout this ritual,
their power generates nothing but BASS
In all that transpires between this world and the next!

Through these Amps there is BASS!
In all communications that come to me!

I'm reading "The First Casualty" by Ben Elton at the moment. I'm finding these days that due to there not being enough hours in the day to even eat, I have only been reading "easy" books for the last couple of years. I even read two Dan Brown books a couple of months ago (very samey and average but extremely easy and fast to read) to get some reading in. I have another Ben Elton one lined up after this one, then maybe the last Clive Barker. Not very highbrow I know.

_________________I am disabled by fears concerning which course to take.

The Power Broker. About Robert Moses who pretty much defined how New York City looks through sheer force of will. Interesting to see what intelligence and ego can get done when you have no filter and no self-doubt. Built an amazing city and yet somehow fucked it up at the same time.

Klawful, it's aimed at children/young readers more like Coraline (which was an actual kid's book), than say American Gods or Anansi Boys. However, it's a smooth flowing read, I find I am halfway thru it before I even really noticed. Bummer it's only 300 pages. It's got some debts to Kipling's Jungle Book (and is noted so by Gaiman in the notes) - am really enjoying it tho.

Klawful, it's aimed at children/young readers more like Coraline (which was an actual kid's book), than say American Gods or Anansi Boys. However, it's a smooth flowing read, I find I am halfway thru it before I even really noticed. Bummer it's only 300 pages. It's got some debts to Kipling's Jungle Book (and is noted so by Gaiman in the notes) - am really enjoying it tho.

sounds great. i haven't gotten to Coraline yet--it's in queue.

Ever try out The Thief of Always by Clive Barker? Pretty decent children's fable with a dark edge, of course.

Ever try out The Thief of Always by Clive Barker? Pretty decent children's fable with a dark edge, of course.

Score! I can join in!

Yep, I've read that a couple of times. Probably one of the more decent Barker offerings of the last ten years or so, he lost his way a bit with stuff like Coldheart Canyon and Galilee I think.

Have you tried his latest "childrens" series The Abarat? Onto the third installment now (haven't read the third yet) but on a similar playing field as Thief Of Always, kind of like a cross between Thief Of Always and Imajica. but for kids. And grownups as the case may be.

_________________I am disabled by fears concerning which course to take.

I'd like to go back and reread older Barker too after checking out Abarat. Damnation Game had some fine gruesome details I recall, but the end was a bit anticlimactic if I remember it right.

Weaveworld I remember being totally into.

The early Barker stuff I've read many times each, I was a big fan as a youngun. Imajica was just stunning in it's massiveness, I'm surprised it's not recognised as more of a classic, not just a fantasy or horror classic, but a general classic.

The Damnation Game was great. As was Weaveworld (although the Weaveworld premise isn't as convincing as the others: Whaaa? You fell into a carpet? And there happened a whole other world in there? Mmmmm.)

Have you tried his other two parter The Great And Secret Show and Everville? Great stuff. It's funny, of course I've read other horror stuff like Herbert and King and the like, but apart from Barker I've never really been into the whole fantasy horror thing. Maybe it's because everything I've tried to read falls short of him at his best.

_________________I am disabled by fears concerning which course to take.

I just finished reading Alasdair Gray's "1982 Janine" -- great in a pornographic and depressingly nihilistic way. currently reading Paul Auster's Moon Palace in a weird German edition with footnotes for non-native English speakers (which are in German, so I can't make all that much sense of them).

And after Round Ireland with a fridge, Playing the Moldovans at tennis and Piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks, I'm now reading The big over easy by Jasper Fforde. Set in Reading, ít's a crime story about the Nursery crime division investigating the murder of Humpty Dumpty.

Sounds pretentious just because it's him...but it's really amazing if you like his movies. It's basically just three guys interviewing him over a period of a few years in the late 1960's - early 1970's. If you're a bit of a movie dork like I am with certain directors, it's fascinating to read about the specifics of certain movies and how they were made.